Slaughterhouse

“ After inspection of the public slaughter-houses in England and in a number of Continental cities, the writer considers that those of Germany are most deserving of description.
The slaughter-house should be situated outside the town, or so placed as to be isolated, and approached by wide roads, so that if cattle are driven through them there should not be interference with the traffic. If possible, the slaughter-house should be connected with the railway system by a branch line, with a platform which has an impervious surface capable of being readily cleansed and disinfected. ”

“ The "lair," or place where the animals are kept, is situated so that the wretched creatures can see right into the slaughter-house. There are no utensils for feeding or watering; there animals are kept as long as the butchers choose.
Or, take another instance. A roofed-in space just at the back of the shop, in close contiguity to an offal-heap and a dust-bin. It is about 10-ft. by 5-ft, in size: that is, about large enough for a man and a couple of sheep to stand in. Here we saw a butcher killing one lamb, while another stood in the corner, behind a hurdle, waiting its turn. ”

“ In France, in the 15th and 16th centuries, numerous towns were provided with public slaughter-houses. It was required that they should be used by all persons killing animals the flesh of which was to be sold ”

“ The whizz of arrows, the crash of descending tomahawks, and the sharp rifle-shot, mingled horribly with the groans, the cries, and oaths of the murderers and the murdered. The floor of that log-house was heaped with the dying and the dead, yet the fight raged on with a fiercer and more blood-thirsty violence, till the savages prowled among the slain like a host of incarnate fiends, slaking their vengeance on the wounded and the dead, for want of other victims. ”

“ In small towns the slaughtering-hall and room for cleansing intestines may, to save cost of construction, be under the same roof. A necessary adjunct is a cold chamber, to which carcases can be removed from the slaughtering-hall. The actual slaughtering compartment has been built on two plans—one providing a separate slaughtering-room for each butcher, the other a common slaughtering-hall. The latter is greatly to be preferred, inasmuch as it is the only arrangement which gives adequate opportunity for inspection by the officials whose duty it is to examine the meat. ”

“ Their position also is often so badly chosen that the children in the vicinity resort there to see the animals killed, and the poor beasts have in some cases to be driven through a narrow passage into the slaughter-house itself, where, trembling at the sight and smell of the blood and carcasses of its dead companions, it remains tethered until its turn comes to fall a victim to the blow of the slaughter-man: a blow which sometimes has often to be repeated before its object is attained, owing to the bad light and cramped surroundings of the place. ”

“ But there are plenty of men engaged in this work of killing animals for food who are much too good for the business. These will tell you openly that they dislike the job, but "people will have meat," and if they were to give it up someone else would step into the work. As to the demoralisation consequent on the trade of a slaughterer, it is written plainly enough, on the countenances of the hapless race who inhabit these "Lugentes Campi." At Deptford there is a regulation forbidding bad language and riotous behaviour among the slaughter-men, on pain of expulsion. ”

“ The busiest slaughter-houses in London are in the neighbourhood of Smithfield, in Newgate Market, in Whitechapel, in Newport Market, in Leadenhall Market, in Clare Market. All these places are surrounded by houses of a poor description, swarming with inhabitants. Some of them are close to the worst burial- grounds in London. When the slaughter-house is below the ground, it is a common practice to throw the sheep down areas, neck and crop - which is exciting, but not at all cruel. When it is on the level surface, it is often extremely difficult of approach. ”

“ An Imperial German law of 1900 extends to all parts of that country the same requirement, and enacts that “neat cattle, swine, sheep, goats, horses, and dogs, the meat of which is intended to be used for food for man, shall be subjected to an official inspection both before and after slaughter.” Antecedent to that year it was in force in southern Germany, in Brunswick and Saxony, but only in some parts of northern, western and central Germany. A similar law exists in Norway and Sweden, but, as already stated, provision of public slaughter-houses is still meagre ”

“ From the open door I watch a soldier in shirt-sleeves, forearms bare, slaughtering a sheep lying with its legs tied to a gate. Each agonized convulsion of the poor beast makes me feel ill; it brings back to my mind the time when, in a slaughter-house, I plunged my leg into a bucket filled with warm blood, streaming in a flood from the severed neck of a slaughtered cow!... ”

“ Seventeen thousand persons were put to the sword, without distinction of age or sex. The young and the innocent, the aged and the helpless, were mingled in the same slaughter with the strong man who resisted to the death. For two days the carnage was continued, until the dead were piled up before the doors of the houses, and the streets ran down with blood. From the cruelty of man the wretched inhabitants sought the protection of God, and, flocking to the churches, they flung themselves in terror before the altars. ”

“ They were slain at the rate of five a minute, and if the pig men were spattered with blood, the cow butchers were bathed in it. The blood ran in muttering gutters. There was no place for hand or foot that was not coated with thicknesses of dried blood, and the stench of it in the nostrils bred fear.
And then the same merciful Providence that has showered good things on my path throughout sent me an embodiment of the city of Chicago, so that I might remember it forever. Women come sometimes to see the slaughter, as they would come to see the slaughter of men. ”

“ In London, slaughter-houses have been licensed since 1855. Private slaughter-houses are frequently situated at the rear of the shop in which the meat is sold. Each consists of a compartment in which the animals are killed, and in association with this are the pounds in which a few animals can be kept pending slaughter. These buildings are regulated by by-laws made under the Public Health Act by the several urban sanitary authorities. The by-laws usually provide for the floor to be made of jointless paving, to ensure that the earth shall not be fouled in the process of slaughtering ”

“ The post of slaughter is at the outskirts of the town, and as you approach it, the squeaking of endless droves proceeding to their doom fills the air, and in wet weather the muck they make is beyond description, as the roads and streets are carelessly made, and as carelessly left to fate. When we were within a couple of hundred yards of the slaughter-house, they were absolutely knee-deep, and, there being no trottoir, we were compelled to wait till an empty cart came by, when, for a small consideration, Jonathan ferried us through the mud-pond. ”

“ This obligation is theoretically recognised, though the most prevalent habit is to ignore the slaughter-house altogether, to draw a veil over the operations that go on inside its walls, and to act on the complacent theory that animals don't mind being killed because they taste so nice when they are eaten. But this is surely to treat the slaughter-house in a very unworthy way. As things are at present, it is the basis of natural life, the cradle of manly health and womanly beauty. ”

“ Among humane implements must be classed those which render the killing process more rapid, although their introduction is due to a desire to save time and money, and not to any feelings of humanity. In some American slaughter-houses bullocks are killed by shooting. ”

“ But the true moral of all that can be said on the subject of improvement of slaughter-houses and methods of slaughtering would appear to be that, as numberless instances all round us show the possibility of healthy and happy human lives being lived without recourse to the butcher, the ultimate object to be aimed at is the gradual education of public opinion up to the point of looking on both butchers' shops, and slaughter-houses as relics of barbarism. ”

“ No separate hanging place. Slaughter-house close to dwelling."
These extracts might be continued, but enough has now been said to show that almost every humane and sanitary principle is daily violated in these dens of cruelty.
Many attempts have been made at various times to introduce humanity into slaughter-houses. The efforts in this direction have been of two different kinds. Private individuals, out of a mere love of animals and dislike of the infliction of needless pain, have invented humane implements of killing, and have induced butchers to consent to give them a trial. ”

“ As if by magic, the savages appeared at every point, yelling like demons of death, and slaughtering all they met. The men in the fields were killed with their own hoes and hatchets. Those in the houses were murdered on their own hearth-stones. So unlooked-for and terrible was the assault that in that day of blood three hundred and forty-seven men, women, and children fell victims to their merciless foes. ”

“ Men, women and children scattered in every direction taking refuge in the woods, while the bullets of the mobbers flew thick and fast among them, wounding and killing.
The mob kept on firing at the shop until they thought all within were killed; then they went about the place killing all they could find alive, and robbing the houses of everything they could carry off. They even stripped the dead and dying of their clothes. They went into the blacksmith shop for this purpose, and there they saw dead men lying in piles, and wounded men groaning in pain, while pools of blood stood on the floor. ”

“ The paving of the lairs may be of asphalte, but care must be taken that near the door of slaughter-house, the paving is of pitchers or something that is not at all slippery, as here the frightened beast often struggles and draws back when he sees the “engines of destruction” in the slaughter-house, and smells the blood of those who have gone before. ”

“ After the battle of Gettysburg she spent two days and nights on the field of slaughter, wading with men’s boots in the blood and mud, pulling out the still living bodies from the heaps of slain, binding up hideous wounds, giving a draught of water to one, placing a rough 237 pillow under the head of another, in an enthusiasm of beneficence which triumphed equally over thought of self and horror of the hideous slaughter. ”

“ They had looked on while innocent and gentle women and children were ruthlessly slaughtered, but the sight of one of their own number slain was one that aroused all their fiercest feelings of revenge, and ere it could be well said that they had had time for thought swords and daggers were flashing in the light, the fair, flower-bestrewn earth was streaming with blood, and mangled bodies of dead and dying creatures, some still clasping their simple offerings, that pleaded for good-will, in their stiffening hands, were piled in awful heaps around the camping ground. ”

“ We find constantly the same tale of the sudden quarrel, the blow with a stick or a stone, the thrust with the knife which every man carried, the stroke with a hatchet. Then the slayer in his panic flies to a nun's garden, to a monastery, or to the shelter of a church, where the men of the village keep guard over him till knights of the shire are sent from the Court, to whom he confesses his crime, and who allow him so many days to fly to the nearest port and forsake the kingdom. ”

“ If this is the attitude the mind instinctively takes up towards the act of killing a fellow-creature, it would seem to follow that man is more allied in his instincts to the cow or the horse than to the tiger. The mere smell of blood, as is well known, drives a horse nearly frantic with terror.The combined smell and sight of blood, which at the Deptford abattoir, is allowed to trickle down into gutters through the hoofs of the animals waiting their turn to be slaughtered, produces all the symptoms of panic fear. ”

“ The slaughter-houses had been employing an orthodox Jew, who, however, was not a rabbi, to see that the meat was properly killed, and he had been doing things all wrong, and the chosen people had been living abominably. I immediately explained the proper way of killing meat, and since then I have regulated several slaughter-houses and make my living in that way. I am also rabbi of a congregation, but it is so small that it doesn't pay. The slaughter-houses are more profitable. ”

“ In England, I saw two men and a woman suffer death on the common sidewalk; just as if we were to hang people in New York on the pavement before the Tombs.
No man, anxious to see an execution in London, need be disappointed. Once or twice a month the wolves are brought to the slaughter, and all the people are invited to enjoy the spectacle. ”

“ So crowded are the slaughtering-rooms at Deptford with the carcases of animals hanging to "set," that towards the end of the day the butchers actually have to stoop down to get room to kill! In the interests of the consumer it is most desirable, as long as meat-eating continues, that the processes of killing, of dressing, and of hanging, should all go on in separate apartments. ”

“ Finding all chance of escape impossible, and seeing their slaughtered fellows drop dead at their feet, they bellowed with fright, and in the confusion that whelmed them lost all power of resistance. The slaughter generally lasted two or three hours, and seldom many got clear of the weapons of their assailants. ”